Page 34 of Wild Card 13
Like comfort.
Like late nights after wins.
Like Northbend itself somehow.
A few people glanced up when we walked in, but not many. Conversations kept moving. Glasses clinked softly somewhere near the bar while an old song played low enough not to overpower the room.
The pine floors creaked beneath our boots as I led Lucy farther inside.
Original wood paneling darkened with age. Small tables packed close together. Old beer signs glowing softly against the walls. A couple TVs mounted high in the corners showing sports highlights with the volume turned low enough nobody paid much attention to them.
It wasn’t trendy.
It wasn’t polished.
It was real.
And suddenly I became weirdly aware this was the first place I’d ever brought Lucy that actually belonged to my world instead of hers.
Not libraries.
Not coffee shops.
Hockey families. Loud booths. Grease-stained baskets of fries. Guys arguing over the Frosthawks at the bar like they personally coached the team.
For a second, nerves washed over me unexpectedly hard.
Which was ridiculous.
I played contact sports voluntarily.
But somehow bringing Lucy Thomas to Matt’s felt more dangerous.
“You’re thinking too hard again,” she observed quietly beside me.
“What?”
“You get this wrinkle thing between your eyebrows when your brain starts spiraling.”
“I do not spiral.”
“You absolutely spiral.”
“Rude.”
“Accurate.”
A woman behind the bar looked up the second she spotted me.
Marlene moved through the narrow space behind the bar with the same steady rhythm she always had. Sharp eyes. Rolled sleeves. The kind of person who read a room before most people realized there was anything to read.
“Well,” she barked immediately, eyeing me over the rim of a glass she was drying, “look who’s alive.”
“Rough season,” I replied.
Her attention shifted toward Lucy beside me. And then immediately back to me.
Oh no.
